The Demise of Social Partnership, or a Balanced Recovery? The
Crisis and Collective Bargaining in Slovakia
Marta Kahancová1
Abstract
This paper analyzes the crisis effects on processes, outcomes and institutions of
collective bargaining in national and sectoral negotiations in the Slovak Republic. It
argues that the crisis did not alter the long-term trend of gradual demise of social
partnership and trade union marginalization at the national level. At the sector level in
the metal and healthcare sectors – two highly organized sectors from the public and
private domains of the Slovak economy – the crisis helped consolidating bargaining
institutions, but did not produce an improved trade union position through bargaining
outcomes. Consolidation has been reached through differing procedural changes to
bargaining in each sector: intensified bargaining due to social partners’ common
interest in anti-crisis employment measures (in metal); and associational strength of
trade unions and employers’ organizations despite escalating post-crisis wage
conflicts (in healthcare). Sector-level bargaining thus contributed to a balanced
recovery from the crisis more than national-level social dialogue.
Introduction
In the past 20 years, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries underwent major
economic, political and societal changes. In Slovakia, the inflow of foreign
investments brought economic and employment growth. Some large foreign
employers helped stabilizing the Slovak bargaining system. However, the 2008
outburst of the crisis put the established bargaining system under pressure because of
diverging interests of employers (employment flexibility), trade unions (employment
security) and the government (employment stability). The aim of this paper is to
analyze how the crisis affected collective bargaining processes, substantive outcomes
and institutions at national and sectoral levels.
The focus on national and sectoral levels is substantiated because of contested
tripartism and simultaneously persistent sector-level bargaining in key economic
sectors. Bohle and Greskovits (2012) argued that Slovakia underwent a gradual labour
exclusion from national-level policymaking. Other authors characterized this trend
across CEE as ‘illusory corporatism’ because the formal existence of tripartite bodies
failed to produce policymaking with systematic trade union involvement (Avdagic
2005, Mailand and Due 2004, Ost 2000, ICTWSS database 2011, Stein 2002).
However, empirical evidence from sector-level studies documents that Slovakia has a
reasonably established bargaining coordination and decent sector-level organization
1
Contact: Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI), Zvolenská 29, 821 09 Bratislava, Slovakia. E-mail
marta.kahancova@celsi.sk The author acknowledges the financial contribution for pursuing this research within the FP7 project
GUSTO and the EC-sponsored BARSORI project (project number VS/2010/0811); and constructive comments from two
anonymous referees and the authors of other contributions in this volume.
of employers (Czíria 2007 and 2010, EC 2013).2 Sector-level bargaining is
widespread in the public sector, including public healthcare, and in some crucial
private sectors, e.g., the metal industry. The aim of this paper is to reconcile these
contrasting literatures and explore whether bargaining institutions, procedures and
outcomes evolve in a path-dependent way, or whether the crisis interrupted the
gradual demise of national-level social partnership while maintaining sector-level
bargaining coordination.
The sectoral analysis focuses on two key sectors – metal and healthcare – representing
the private and public domains of the Slovak economy. The metal sector, especially
the automotive industry, is strategically important for Slovakia’s economy and
employment. With 106 automobiles per 1000 residents, in 2007 Slovakia became the
world’s largest per capita producer of motor vehicles.3 Due to extensive integration
into international markets, the sector is highly exposed to global economic downturns.
In contrast, public healthcare has not been affected by crisis through market exposure,
but through austerity and long-term reforms, creating divergent interests among
healthcare employers and therefore a threat to coordinated bargaining. Despite
variation across these sectors in their crisis exposure, they share a high rate of
unionization and established sectoral bargaining coordination. It is therefore
interesting to explore how the crisis influenced bargaining procedures, outcomes and
institutions across these sectors.
Recent evidence suggests that social partnership in Slovakia played an important role
in reaching a ‘balanced recovery’ through mediating and overcoming the crisis effects
(Czíria 2012). In result, the crisis did not have a major impact on Slovak industrial
relations (ibid.). However, this paper argues that crisis effects on bargaining are more
complex and vary not only across national and sectoral levels but especially across
bargaining institutions, procedures and outcomes.
At the national level, dependence on political support only brought temporary
improvements in bargaining outcomes for trade unions (i.e., flat extensions of
collective agreements, co-determination in company-level anti-crisis measures and
involvement in Labour Code amendments such as the definition of dependent work).
While confirming the outcomes-based weakening inclusion of labour in
policymaking, formal tripartite institutions remained stable. Bargaining procedures
underwent a temporary improvement with the introduction of the Council for
Economic Crisis, which was however abolished only a few months later.
At the sector level, the crisis did not undermine coordinated bargaining but
contributed to its consolidation in both scrutinized sectors. Instead of accelerated
decentralization, bargaining institutions remained stable during the crisis but stability
has been reached differently in each sector. In metal, social partners shared an interest
in adopting anti-crisis employment measures and therefore remained committed to
2
Employers’ organization density in Slovakia (proportion of employees in employment), declined from 33% (2002) to 29%
(2008). Employers’ organizations are notoriously absent at the sector-level e.g. in Hungary and Poland with predominance of
single-employer bargaining patterns. Source: ICTWSS.
3
SARIO Sectoral Report on the Slovak Automotive Industry www.sario.sk http://www.sario.sk/?automobilovy-priemysel
[accessed 3 September 2010].
2
bargaining coordination instead of opting out of sectoral deals. In healthcare, social
partners lacked such common interest but bargaining remained stable because of
associational strength of unions and employer organizations. In result, the main
changes to bargaining procedures in metal included bargaining intensification, while
in healthcare bargaining procedures continued via third party mediation after social
partner disputes. From an outcomes perspective, trade unions were involved in
adopting sector-specific anti-crisis measures especially in the metal sector. Although
unions favour these outcomes, they benefit employers more than unions. In sum, the
crisis fuelled changes to sector-level bargaining procedures that helped consolidating
bargaining institutions, but did not produce an improved trade union position through
bargaining outcomes.
The paper’s findings draw on in-depth interviews and written communication with
social partners in 2009-2012 within the FP7 project GUSTO and the EC-sponsored
project BARSORI. The author conducted 19 interviews on recent changes to contents
and procedures of sectoral collective bargaining and national social dialogue.4
Additional evidence originates from a written questionnaire response of KOZ SR’s
vice president on trade union action regarding precarious work, national/local media,
statistical information, the ICTWSS database5 and Czíria (2012) providing original
evidence from a 2008 survey on social partners’ views on legislative changes to
collective bargaining.
The Slovak industrial relations
Since the late 1990s, the Slovak economy underwent a wide-ranging reform path to
reach macroeconomic stability and employment growth. Economic growth peaked
with a 10.5% real GDP growth in 2007.6 Real wages increased in average by 3.8% in
2007-2008.7 This economic success was accompanied by radical welfare state
restructuring that was left without major opposition from the public or trade unions.
Several reasons can explain the lack of resistance: first, Slovak citizens aimed at
‘catching up’ with their neighbours and were willing to tolerate austerity (Bohle and
Greskovits 2012: 247). Second, the contested position of Slovak tripartism and
individual responses of dissatisfied citizens yielded emigration, exit from political
participation and the rise of populism (Meardi 2011). The third reason is bargaining
decentralization and a declining trade union density (see Figure 1). Since the late
1990s, the established hierarchy of social partners and bargaining institutions
accounted for a continuing sectoral bargaining in relevant sectors without regular
pattern setting and with weak involvement of peak-level social partners.8 As company
bargaining gradually strengthened, enforceability of sector/industry agreements
Three interviews with bargaining experts from the national-level union confederation KOZ SR and employers’ confederations
RÚZ and AZZZ; 5 interviews with chief negotiators of the metal sector’s trade union OZ KOVO, 3 interviews with healthcare
sector trade union officials (SOZZaSS and LOZ); 8 interviews with employers’ associations and professional chambers’ leaders
in metal and healthcare.
5
Database on Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts in 34 countries,
1960-2010; version 3.0 (2011).
6
Eurostat.
7
Slovak Statistical Office (ŠÚ SR).
8
ICTWSS.
4
3
weakened and bargaining coverage has been systematically declining from 51% in
2000 to 40% in 2009 (see Figure 1). The reason is a declining net trade union density
(from 67,29% in 1993 to 17,7% in 2008), low organization of employers (net
employer density reaching 29.2% in 2008), and a limited use of legal extension
mechanisms to increase bargaining coverage.9 Bargaining procedures and coverage
vary across sectors, with some sectors being more widely covered by sectoral or
multi-employer collective agreements (e.g., metal and healthcare), and some sectors
with predominant company/establishment-level bargaining (e.g., agriculture). Wages,
employment security and working conditions are the most important bargaining
subjects (Czíria 2012).
Figure 1: Union density and bargaining coverage trends*
* Union density rate = net union membership as a proportion of wage and salary earners in employment
Bargaining coverage = employees covered by wage bargaining agreements as a proportion of all wage and salary earners in
employment with the right to bargaining, adjusted according to Traxler (1994)
Source: ICTWSS.
The crisis
The crisis interrupted the positive economic developments in Slovakia: after the
10.5% growth in 2007, real GDP growth only reached 5.8% in 2008 and plummeted
at -4.8% in 2009 before recovering at 4.5% in 2010.10 Given the strong (automotive)
industry orientation of the Slovak economy, the main crisis effects concentrated at
production and labour markets. Industrial production declined by 29% and the
production of motor vehicles in particular by almost 20% between 2008 and 2009
before fully recovering in 2010.11
Such decline reinforced employer restructuring with consequences for employment
and collective bargaining. First, employers adjusted through dismissals (external
flexibility) that reverted the pre-2008 trend of declining unemployment.
Unemployment grew from 9.5% (2008) to 14.4% (2010) (see Figure 2). Although
9
ICTWSS. Net density rates weighted by dependent employment.
Eurostat.
11
Eurostat, Brngálová and Kahancová (2011).
10
4
reported collective dismissals increased in 2008 and 2009 (see Table 1), firms
preferred piecemeal dismissals to mass dismissals.12
Figure 2: Unemployment rate in Slovakia
Source: Slovak Statistical Office (ŠÚ SR).
Table 1: Collective dismissals in 2007–2010
Number of registered cases
Number of employers concerned
Number of threatened employees
Number of actually dismissed employees
2007
174
170
19,131
10,417
2008
218
215
14,387
10,948
2009
347
330
30,259
23,367
2010
100
99
8,788
6,287
Source: Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (ÚPSVaR), Czíria (2012).
Second, employers opted for working time and work reorganization (internal
flexibility). Although the crisis stimulated legal changes to increase hiring/firing
flexibility, large companies preferred core workforce training to dismissals (Czíria
2012). Temporary agency work dropped from 55,377 (2008) to 37,074 (2009)
employees and continued to further decline.13 The share of part-time employment on
total employment also declined. Third, the crisis slowed down the wage growth: the
real wage growth reached 3.3% in 2008, dropped to 1.4% in 2009 and slightly
recovered at 2.2% in 2010.14
Policy response to the crisis focused on stabilizing employment and stimulating
consumption. The 2007 pre-crisis Labour Code amendment introduced the definition
of dependent work and limits to prolongation of fixed-term contracts. The
government adopted over 60 anti-crisis policy measures including state allowances to
employers avoiding dismissals and temporary opt-out clauses from obligatory social
security contributions (Czíria 2009a). The most important policy measures include
temporary flexible working time accounts (flexikonto) and short-time work (STW),
both used predominantly in the car industry after 2009 (Czíria 2012). Flexikonto has
been introduced at the company-level at Volkswagen Slovakia before it became
12
SME (2009).
ÚPSVaR and http://profesia.pravda.sk/agentury-prenajimaju-firmam-uz-14-tisic-ludi-few-/skprzam.asp?c=A110728_070525_sk-przam_p01 [accessed August 9, 2011].
14
ŠÚ SR, Slovstat.
13
5
subject of sector-level bargaining and the 2009 Labour Code amendment. The
implementation of flexikonto is subject to agreement with trade unions. STW schemes
aimed at avoiding dismissals through shortening the working day or week.
The crisis and national-level collective bargaining
The pro-labour government (2006-2010), which introduced the above anti-crisis
measures, also fostered the involvement of social partners in policymaking. Anticrisis measures were subject to tripartite consultations within the Economic and
Social Council (Hospodárska a sociálna rada, HSR). Social partners were also
involved in the Council for Economic Crisis, a new advisory body to the government
(Czíria 2010). Through an openly declared cooperation with the leading political
party Smer, trade unions benefitted from several gains, including their codetermination right on flexikonto, the introduction of horizontal extensions to sectoral
collective agreements, and Labour Code amendments such as the definition of
dependent employment.
The crisis therefore initially seemed to strengthened tripartite social dialogue in
procedural terms. However, the Council for Economic Crisis was abolished already in
late 2009 and formal tripartite procedures resembled the pre-crisis situation. In
outcomes, tripartism’s role remained formal and trade union gains were temporary,
politically dependent and responsive to government action. Since the government was
also under the influence of business lobby, the above union attitude gradually paved
the way for more bargaining power for employers. After the 2010 government change
trade unions lost political support and thus their main resource in national-level social
dialogue. The new government abolished the erga omnes extension mechanism and
introduced higher thresholds for trade union representation at the company level.
In sum, while the crisis brought temporary gains to trade unions in terms of outcomes
of tripartite negotiations, these gains did not translate into a procedural and
institutional strengthening of tripartism. Therefore, we support Bohle and Greskovits
(2012) in arguing that labour is facing a gradual marginalization from national-level
policymaking. An external shock like the economic crisis failed to revert this longterm trend.
The crisis and sector-level collective bargaining
Czíria (2012: 23-24) argued that sector-level bargaining procedures remained
unchanged during the crisis, but the crisis worsened the relations between social
partners, with wage setting being the most common reason for conflicts. Compared to
other CEE countries, Slovakia underwent the highest relative reductions in post-crisis
increases of collectively agreed base wages. The 5.5% increase in 2009 dropped to
2.2% in 2010.15 Table 2 reports the average nominal wage increases (in companylevel agreements) in selected sectors. In metal, the largest drop occurred immediately
in 2009 because of a flexible production response to world markets. In healthcare,
15
EIRO: Pay Developments – 2010, in: http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/studies/tn1109060s/tn1109060s.htm
6
post-crisis austerity measures postponed the greatest drop in collective wage increases
until 2010.
Table 2 Average collectively agreed nominal wage increases in %
2007
Mechanical engineering
and electric industries
Chemical industry
Construction
Commerce and tourism
Public administration
Health and social care
Education
6.5
7.1
2008
5.0
2009
2010
3.5*
5.2
6.8
4.9
6.5
9.5
6.3
4.2
6.5
5.7
4.4
8.0
4.6
4.1
5.2
5.6
5.5
8.8
6.7
3.1**
3.7***
4.3
1.7
3.0
1.7
Source: Information System of Working Conditions (Informačný systém o pracovných podmienkach, ISPP) in Czíria (2012: 25).
* including metallurgy, ** including the energy sector, *** including municipal services.
While these are important findings, our analysis of metal and healthcare sectors
reveals changes to bargaining procedures in each sector. In metal, the crisis fuelled
employers’ preferences for individual solutions and simultaneously encouraged
bargaining coordination about feasible anti-crisis measures. In result, social partners’
incentives to coordinated bargaining restored sector-level bargaining. In healthcare,
escalating wage disputes led to greater use of conflict settlement mechanisms in
bargaining. Despite these differences, in both sector we find path-dependent stability
in established bargaining institutions.
In bargaining outcomes, Czíria (2012: 24-25) reports wage moderation, work
organization changes including less temporary/agency workers, redundancy pay,
conflict settlement and application of flexikonto and STW. The number of multiemployer and single-employer agreements only slightly decreased during 2008 –
2010.16 However, our analysis again highlights contrasts between sectors. In metal,
social partners’ commitment to sectoral bargaining coordination produced a
consensus on adopted anti-crisis measures. Although the outcome favours employers
more than unions, unions welcome the continuity in concluding sector-level collective
agreements. In healthcare, social partners were unable to reach consensus and
bargaining outcomes were settled through third party involvement. These findings
derive from original empirical evidence discussed below.
Metal sector bargaining
In 2008-2009, industrial production declined by 16% because of declining export
performance.17 Besides steel and electronics, the highly export-oriented
manufacturing/car production is the strongest division of the metal sector and has
been most crisis affected. Its 20% share in industrial production (2008) dropped
slightly in 2009.18 Remarkably car producers did not announce significant dismissals
16
Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (multi-employer agreements) and the Information System of Working
Conditions (single-employer agreements).
17
Association of Automotive Industry (Združenie automobilového priemyslu SR, ZAP SR)
18
Ibid.
7
and prioritized other anti-crisis measures, e.g. flexikonto and no temporary agency
work or fixed-term contracts.19
The sector is well organized in a single sector-level trade union OZ KOVO and
several employers’ associations that bargain with OZ KOVO individually. The main
long-term challenge of the sector is bargaining decentralization, fuelled by
mergers/splits among employers’ associations, legal changes and the state’ weak role
in giving employers incentives to bargaining coordination. Mergers/splits however
also had re-centralising effects on the car industry. ZAP SR split from other
associations and commissioned the Federation of Mechanical Engineering (Zväz
strojárskeho priemyslu, ZSP) to bargain for the whole mechanical engineering
subsector.
Despite the long-term bargaining decentralization trend, the crisis did not accelerate
decentralization and undermine sector-level bargaining institutions. However, the
crisis brought changes to bargaining procedures. Because of employers’ support to
revoke horizontal extensions and introduce stricter union representativeness criteria,
OZ KOVO’s attitude to employers’ associations worsened during the crisis (Czíria
2012). Overcoming union dissatisfaction and employers’ incentives to opt out from
sectoral bargaining and adopt tailor-made anti-crisis measures, social partners found a
common stance to negotiate anti-crisis measures. Their common stance relates mainly
to employment stability of skilled workforce. Some employers aimed at preserving
skilled labour and offered more generous conditions to skilled employees temporarily
in flexikonto or STW arrangements. Others increased pressures onto regular
employees to involuntarily accept STW. Finally, some employers opted for dismissals
of bogus self-employed and agency workers. With OZ KOVO being open to tailored
employer preferences, the conclusion of annual or bi-annual collective agreements
continued without interruption.
Bargaining outcomes refer to the adoption of anti-crisis provisions in all relevant
subsectors: mechanical engineering, electronics, and steel. In mechanical engineering,
social partners signed an amendment to the 2008-2009 collective agreement
stipulating STW, lockouts with 60% wage compensation, and flexikonto. In the 20102011 agreement, social partners reinforced their anti-crisis strategy and included
additional stipulations on joint support to legal changes aiming at lowering nonproductive employer costs.20 While earlier collective agreements did not include
provisions on temporary employment, the 2010-2011 agreement stipulates that
temporary contracts should not be prolonged and (bogus) self-employment should be
minimized. Upon OZ KOVO initiative, similar provisions were agreed in electronics’
and steel industry’s 2010-2011 collective agreements.21
While these outcomes document the social partners’ efforts to actively use sectorlevel bargaining institutions, these provisions tend to favour employers and fuel a dual
19
EIRO; in http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2009/08/articles/sk0908019i.htm [accessed September 14, 2012].
See Brngálová and Kahancová (2011: 39) for details.
21
Dismissals are stipulated in the following order: temporary agency workers, subcontractors, self-employed, fixed-term
employees, and core employees in case of labour oversupply. Upon recovery, employees should be re-hired in the opposite order
20
8
labour market, protecting skills and and shifting the burden of production decline onto
precarious and less unionized workers. However, the duality does not result from
failed trade union effort to protect ‘outsiders’, but from a deliberate strategy of both
employers and OZ KOVO.22
In sum, the crisis did not accelerate bargaining decentralization in the metal sector.
Within the path-dependent developments and trade union dissatisfaction with
employers’ support to anti-union legislative changes, coordinated bargaining
continued also during the crisis. Noteworthy changes occurred in bargaining
procedures: the social partners’ common stance on anti-crisis measures brought new
incentives for strengthened bargaining coordination and an uninterrupted conclusion
of collective agreements with anti-crisis stipulations. Bargaining intensified through
employers’ and unions’ commitment to coordinate anti-crisis measures; and yielded
consolidation to sector-level bargaining institutions. Finally, bargaining outcomes as a
deliberate choice of both unions and employers facilitated a growing gap between
skilled core employees (given the pre-crisis labour shortages) and employees in
precarious jobs.
Healthcare sector bargaining
Until 2005, healthcare was covered by collective agreements for public service signed
by national-level social partners. Since 2006, independent sector-specific bargaining
applies to healthcare with two sectoral trade unions directly negotiating multiemployer collective agreements with each of the four employers’ associations. Union
density reached about 50% and employer density about 80% in 2006, making
healthcare one of the best-organized sectors in the economy (Czíria 2009b).
Collective agreements cover about 95% of public healthcare employees.
Crisis effects on public healthcare remarkably differ from the metal sector. Instead of
direct exposure to overemployment and production decline, the crisis helped to
relieve pre-crisis labour shortages (Kaminska and Kahancová 2011) and affected
healthcare through public sector austerity measures. Austerity meant that health
insurance companies received fewer funds from the state budget, which increased the
budget constraints of public healthcare providers (especially smaller hospitals). This
situation escalated conflicts in sector-level bargaining where wage increases recurred
as the main point of dispute.
Despite the above crisis-induced effects, established bargaining institutions in
healthcare did not break down. However, similar to the metal sector, noteworthy
changes occurred in bargaining procedures. It has been increasingly difficult to
conclude agreements after 2009 because of wage disputes. In the hospital subsector,
the unions concluded collective agreements with each of the two employers’
organizations in 2006 and amendments thereto in 2007 and 2008. After this period,
social partners bargained regularly but failed to conclude new agreements until mid
2012 when they finally reached an agreement with the Association of Faculty
22
Interview OZ Kovo, May 2011.
9
Hospitals (AFN SR) but not with the Association of Hospitals of Slovakia (ANS).
Between 2009 and 2012, all negotiations ended in the hands of a dispute settlement
institution instead of a direct deal between social partners. These disputes derived
from differing social partner perspectives on wage rises. All mediator decisions
stipulated lower wage increases than trade unions requested.
The bargaining agenda did not change substantially and covers predominantly wages,
working time, pension contributions, dismissal regulation and social fund
maintenance. Some broadening in bargaining outcomes is obvious from 2009, e.g.,
training and lifelong learning, conditions for work-life balance and performancerelated pay increases. These provisions are more common in hospitals with lower
budget constraints.
In sum, coordinated bargaining in Slovak healthcare shows remarkable stability
despite public sector austerity, causing tensions between unions and employers on
wage increases. There are also other pressures onto bargaining decentralization,
including frequent legal changes, attempts to legally limit trade union codetermination
rights and a major reorganization of healthcare employers’ associations. However,
because of a strong interest representation structure in healthcare, unions regularly
voice their dissatisfaction with these pressures in protests, strikes and government
negotiations.23 In result, pressures for bargaining decentralization increased but
simultaneously created preconditions for strengthening sector-level bargaining by
shifting the entire bargaining responsibility onto healthcare social partners. These
opposite forces crystallized in social partners’ hands and sector-level bargaining has
not been defeated but strengthened because of the unions’ and employers
organizations’ high associational power and greater bargaining responsibilities upon
public sector austerity measures. This continuity in bargaining procedures, despite
greater third party involvement in reaching post-crisis bargaining outcomes,
contributed to consolidation of bargaining institutions.
Conclusions: A balanced recovery through collective bargaining?
Due to a strong industrial focus of the Slovak economy, crisis effects became obvious
mainly through output decline, unemployment, and a greater exposure to precarious
employment. In contrast, in the public sector, especially in healthcare, the crisis
helped to relieve labour shortages but brought serious austerity measures.
How did these effects influence collective bargaining in Slovakia? This paper aimed
at uncovering how the crisis influenced collective bargaining procedures, outcomes,
and institutions within Slovak industrial relations at the national and sector levels.
We argue that there is a dual pattern in crisis effects on bargaining at the national and
sectoral levels, with a declining role of social partnership in mitigating crisis effects
through tripartite concertation at the national level on the one hand, and consolidation
The 2011 campaign of the Doctors’ Trade Union LOZ, involving coordinated job leave threats of doctors in largest hospitals,
attracted massive media interests and pushed the government to stipulate higher wages and revoke the planned organizational
transformation of hospitals (Kahancová and Szabó 2012).
23
10
of sector-level bargaining institutions through coordinated bargaining procedures in
the studied sectors on the other hand. Moreover, we argue that the crisis not only had
a differential impact on bargaining at the national and sector levels, but also across
particular sectors.
At the national level, dependence on political support brought temporary gains to
trade unions in bargaining outcomes (horizontal extensions of collective agreements
and co-determination in anti-crisis measures and Labour Code amendments).
Similarly, bargaining procedures only underwent a temporary improvement. From a
long-term perspective, we confirm the path-dependent weakening of social
partnership and marginalization of unions in policymaking based on bargaining
outcomes (c.f. Bohle and Greskovits 2012), However, the crisis did not accelerate
changes to formal tripartite institutions, which show relative stability within pathdependent developments of the overall national industrial relations system.
At the sector level, the crisis did not cause a shock to the established bargaining
institutions in either metal or healthcare sectors. Despite remarkably different crisisinduced challenges in each sector (dismissals, STW and flexikonto in metal and wage
disputes in healthcare), coordinated bargaining was consolidated in both sectors.
However, consolidation in bargaining institutions happened through procedural
changes to bargaining, which differed across each sector. In metal, the crisis united
the social partners in seeking the most feasible anti-crisis measures, which produced
more intensive bargaining on collective agreements in mechanical engineering, steel
and electronics. This procedural change reinforced social partners’ use of established
bargaining channels and thus consolidated bargaining institutions instead of their
defeat. In healthcare, pressures for bargaining decentralization originated in public
sector austerity measures that shifted bargaining responsibilities onto healthcare social
partners and also divided healthcare employers along their budgetary limits. Social
partners continued with independent multi-employer bargaining but failed to conclude
collective agreements due to escalating wage disputes. Bargaining procedures thus
increasingly occurred through third party involvement. However, the strong
associational power of healthcare unions and employers’ associations prevented a
collapse of coordinated bargaining procedures and consolidated the established
bargaining institutions.
From the perspective of bargaining outcomes, unions were part of formulating anticrisis stipulations (e.g. on temporary employment in the metal sector and on wages in
healthcare sector). Most outcomes favour employers (metal) or are based on a
mediator’s decision (healthcare); however, unions are satisfied with their role in the
bargaining process despite that outcomes did not foster improvements in unions’
position.
We can derive several implications for the future role of collective bargaining and
trade unions from the above arguments. First, it is relevant to ask how do
developments at the national and sector levels interact. The Slovak case documents
that a reasonably established and functioning sector-level bargaining can contribute to
a sustainable coordinated bargaining system more than formally established but
11
‘illusory’ tripartism at the national level. More research is required to test this
implication from a long-term perspective on developments in bargaining institutions
and more sectors representing the entire economy. Such evidence could revert the
argument that tripartism became the hallmark of industrial relations across CEE
because it partly compensates for underdeveloped sectoral collective bargaining (c.f.
EC 2013, Tatur 1995, Iankova 1998).
The second implication refers to trade union strength in facilitating a balanced
recovery from the crisis. From a process-oriented perspective, trade unions are
increasingly marginalized from national-level policymaking while they successfully
avoided marginalization from sector-level bargaining. Therefore, sectoral unions
played a crucial role in a balanced, or coordinated, recovery from the crisis. However,
from the perspective of outcomes, unions failed to achieve sustainable gains for
workers or for themselves at the national and sector levels. Interestingly and in
contrast with the above process-oriented argument, national-level unions succeeded in
extending more protection to precarious workers (through the re-definition of
dependent employment) than sector-level unions that explicitly sidelined most
precarious workers (especially in the metal sector).
Although this paper tried to offer a comparative perspective covering the national and
sector-level developments as well as a comparison of two sectors, the remaining
caveats are the generalizability of the sector-based arguments to the whole economy,
and a difficulty to separate crisis-induced challenges on industrial relations from
challenges to the long-term evolution of political economy (e.g., transition, neoliberal
policymaking, declining union density across the EU). Slovakia is still considered as a
country where the sector is the dominant bargaining level, but there are many sectors
with decentralized bargaining. Sectors studied in this paper are crucial for the GDP
and employment in Slovakia. Addressing more encompassing sector-level bargaining
developments and the above caveats is subject to further research.
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